--------------------------------------------------------------
This newsletter is not sent unsolicited. See the end of this
message for more info (including subscribe/unsubscribe info).
--------------------------------------------------------------
#036/22-Oct-99
POOR RICHARD'S WEB SITE NEWS
Geek-Free, Commonsense Advice on Building a Low-Cost Web Site
Editor: Peter Kent
Top Floor Publishing
http://PoorRichard.com/
Over 37,000 Subscribers in More Than 100 Countries!
~~~ IN THIS ISSUE ~~~
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
Beginner's Column:
RealNames -- Another Way to Beat the Search Engines?
Useful Web Design Utilities
Purchase Circles -- What They are and What's Next
More Domain-Name Madness
Domain Names -- $6/Year
Poor Richard's Web Site and Other Top Floor Books
Book Reviewers Wanted
Reading Back Issues
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
**** IF YOU FIND THIS NEWSLETTER USEFUL ...
FORWARD IT TO FRIENDS AND COLLEAGUES ****
****************************************************sponsor****
PREMIER PET INSURANCE, http://www.ppins.com/email1, is proud to
announce the development of an extremely important health
insurance policy for your dog or cat. If you're like most pet
owners, you consider your pet a member of the family. While you
would never want yourself or a family member to be uninsured
against catastrophic health conditions, have you given the same
consideration to your beloved pet? With a Premier Pet Insurance
policy, for literally pennies a day, your pet will be assured
the best health insurance coverage available today. Please
click on http://www.ppins.com/email1 to visit our website or
call us toll-free at 1-877-PPI-CARE.
****sponsor****************************************************
{{ Beginner's Column:
RealNames -- Another Way to Beat the Search Engines? }}
========>>>
There's a new way to get to the top of the search-engine
listings. I'm not really happy with the way this situation has
turned out, but there's not a lot I can do about ... it's
become a reality, so you may as well understand how to make it
work for you. Let me explain.
First, try this. Go to Altavista -- http://www.altavista.com/
-- and type the words "greek vacations" the search box, then
click on the Search button. When the search engine has done its
work you'll see a link at the top of the list that says "greek
vacations - Click here for a list of Internet Keywords related
to greek vacations." Click on the link, and you'll see the
links to several sites related to greece.
Now, try this. Type "Toyota Celica" into the search box and
press Enter -- this time you'll see a link right at the top of
the list that says "Toyota Celica. Click on this Internet
Keyword to go directly to the Toyota Celica Web site." There
are little letters, RN, immediately after Toyota Celica.
Now, open Microsoft Internet Explorer 5 and type the words
Toyota Celica into the Location bar. Press Enter, and a frame
opens in the left side of the browser window. Right at the top
of the frame you'll see the same Toyota Celica link, with the
same little RN.
RN stands for RealNames, and a number of companies have signed
up to work with this system. In addition to AltaVista and
Microsoft, companies and Web sites such as GO, MSN, Mindspring,
and even Network Solutions are working with RealNames.
RealNames allows you to buy keywords, so that when someone
types the keywords into some kind of search system, your site
will pop up first in the list.
I don't like this system, I'll say that right now. It's added
another layer of complexity to the Internet. In the early days
it took foresight to pick a good domain name, then it required
a little work to make sure your site is properly listed in the
search engines... now you have to pay, too, to properly listed.
The idea of free search-engine listings appeal to me, a sort of
meritocracy -- if you do your work, you can get listed.
Everyone has the same chance. Except now you can pay to go to
the top of the list. (And I really don't like the idea that
Network Solutions -- the company that administers the domain
name system -- has signed up to work with RealNames, either.)
RealNames says that this system is intended to simplify the
Internet, because it allows keywords to be used to reach Web
sites. But we already had a system in which keywords could be
used to reach Web sites -- the .com domains. Not so long ago
typing a single word into a browser would make that browser
automatically search for the the .com domain of the same name.
So why do we need another keyword system? Ah, well, this allows
more sites to use the same keyword, and the mixing of keywords.
You can now search for "greek vacations," for instance.
It also allows sites to share keywords... perhaps. But it
allows companies to buy up keywords so nobody else can use them
-- try registering your site under the MP3 keyword, for
instance ... you won't be able to, because MP3.com has bought
the rights to it.
I don't much like this system, overall, but it's here, and here
to stay (at least for the foreseeable future). So you might as
well figure out if it can work for you!
If you want to find out if keywords that would be useful to you
are available, visit the RealNames site:
http://www.realnames.com/
There's also a very interesting article on how to work with
RealNames here:
http://www.associateprograms.com/search/search-engine-rankings.shtml
^+^+^+^+^+^+^+^+^+^+^+^+^+^+^+^+^+^+^+^+
{{ Useful Web Design Utilities }}
========>>>
A reader sent me information about a useful collection of
utilities -- The Web Writer's Toolbox. It's shareware -- you'll
have to pay $15 to get some of the utilities to work -- with a
little over a dozen tools. There are several color tools, for
instance. Pick a palette -- a 24-bit palette or a browser safe
palette for instance -- then click on a color to see the hex
code you'd use to create the color in a browser. There's an
icon tool that allows you to extract icons from program files,
then create buttons from the icons; a file converter, to
convert from bmp to jpg; and a screen-shot program, to take
pictures of selected areas of your screen. There's even a handy
little tool for creating special characters in Web pages --
click on the character you want, to see the code you'll need.
The program's user interface needs a little work, but there are
some handy little tools in this kit. You can find it here:
http://web.one.net.au/~webtoolbox/toolbox.htm
****************************************************sponsor****
FREE! BRAND NEW MARKETING RESOURCE E-BOOK! FREE!
***Written by a Marketing Expert Publisher of Paid-for Ezine.
***The Best Issues of this Pay To Subscribe Ezine are FREE!
***The Best of Its Kind You'll Ever Find = Free Download Now!
***Use Simple Formula For Financial Freedom = C + SS + PA
***Outstanding Company, Sponsoring System and Plan Of Action!
http://www.doctorsteam.com/51 FOUNDER: Bing Obaldo,M.D.
****sponsor****************************************************
{{ Purchase Circles -- What They are and What's Next }}
========>>>
Did you hear the recent fuss about "Purchase Circles"?
Amazon.com has been providing information about what particular
groups of people are buying. You can see what, for instance,
Microsoft employees purchased recently, or U.S. Marines, people
in Canada or Egypt, or students and faculty at the Abilene
Christian University. There was a little fuss about this when
the system was first introduced, perhaps not surprisingly. If
you'd like to read a little about the implications, and what
may be next, take a look at Chris Locke's article on the
subject at Personalization.com, "Beyond Purchase Circles."
Do I find it interesting that "Business @ the Speed of
Thought" is the number-one best seller at Microsoft — while
the number 12 slot is held down by "The Microsoft File: The
Secret Case Against Bill Gates"? Do I find it interesting
that the top 20 Microsoft purchases include no books on
Linux — or that the top ten buys coming from Microsoft
Network (MSN.COM) include no technical books whatsoever? Or
that the numero uno order from Ogilvy & Mather is "Truth,
Lies and Advertising"? Or that there's no listing at all for
IBM (did they bail out? if so, what do they not want me to
know?).
See http://www.personalization.com/soapbox/
Personalization.com is a new site that is a "clearinghouse of
objective information about personalization." It will "explore
what 'personalization' means for Internet commerce...
... The term is freighted with many meanings — ranging from
the form letter hysterically announcing "You may already be
a winner!" to web pages that display the local weather in
return for a simple zip code to far more sophisticated
backend systems that track customer preferences and make
complex predictions."
Well worth investigating. I've written about my friend Chris
Locke before -- he's a great writer, both insightful and
entertaining, which is a rare combination.
****************************************************sponsor****
WebCavern.com
Includes interactive resources for webmasters plus articles
about website design and promotion, reviews of software and
services for webmasters, plus a listing of the most popular
webmaster resource sites! Add your site now!
http://www.webcavern.com
****sponsor****************************************************
{{ More Domain-Name Madness }}
========>>>
I've written before about why you should write the domain-name
portion of your URL in mixed case, so I won't go into detail
right now. But I just had to mention a few examples I've run
into recently.
A reader sent me one that you might find amusing,
www.lumbermansexchange.com. For most of us, the term
"sexchange" just jumps out of the URL. It might have been
clearer and more easily understood had the owners written it
thus: www.LumbermansExchange.com.
On the other hand, the ambiguity of this URL gained them
national attention when it was mentioned in a national computer
magazine!
Here's one that's just plain unclear:
www.toolcribofthenorth.com. Surely writing it as
www.ToolCribOfTheNorth.com would have made it much easier to
understand.
Finally, here's one that's virtually incomprehensible in
lowercase: www.rusickofit.com. What they really mean is
www.RUSickOfIt.com (though admittedly that's not terribly
clear, either .. perhaps www.R_U_SickOfIt.com would have been
clearer).
There's no reason you can't have mixed case in the domain-name
portion your URL ... but don't fool around with the directory
portion of the URL (everything to the right of the .com/ part).
^+^+^+^+^+^+^+^+^+^+^+^+^+^+^+^+^+^+^+^+
{{ Domain Names -- $6/Year }}
========>>>
You can expect domain names to come down in price dramatically.
The price paid to Network Solutions by a registrar when it
registers a domain name has now been fixed at $6 a year. At
that price we should soon see registration fees come down, and
domains given away in some cases -- host a Web site with a
hosting company, for instance, and there's a good chance your
domain won't cost anything.
For an article related to the new domain-registration system,
see:
http://dailynews.netscape.com/news/Business/09_28_1999.robtz1812-story-bcbusinesstechnetworksolutions.html
^+^+^+^+^+^+^+^+^+^+^+^+^+^+^+^+^+^+^+^+
{{ Poor Richard's Web Site and Other Top Floor Books }}
========>>>
Top Floor Publishing now has five books in print:
Poor Richard's E-mail Publishing
http://PoorRichard.com/email/
Poor Richard's Web Site
http://PoorRichard.com/
Poor Richard's Internet Marketing and Promotions
http://PoorRichard.com/promo/
The CDnow Story: Rags to Riches on the Internet
http://TopFloor.com/cdnow/
MP3 and the Digital Music Revolution: Turn Your PC into a
CD-Quality Jukebox
http://TopFloor.com/mp3/
Order direct from the publisher, and you'll get a 100%, 1-Year
Guarantee. If you feel the book wasn't worth the money, send it
back for a refund!
And remember, these books are discounted at the Web site, and
you pay just one shipping cost regardless of how many books you
buy!
^+^+^+^+^+^+^+^+^+^+^+^+^+^+^+^+^+^+^+^+
{{ Book Reviewers Wanted }}
========>>>
Do you review books for newspapers, magazines, newsletters
(electronic or paper), Web sites, or other media spots? If so,
perhaps you'd like to review Top Floor Publishing's latest
book, "Poor Richard's E-mail Publishing." Or perhaps you'd like
to review one of the other books I mentioned above?
Contact my Marketing Director, Missy Derkacz, at
[EMAIL PROTECTED] Include your full mailing address, the
name of newspaper/magazine/whatever in which the review will
appear and the probable date of publication, and the editor's
contact information.
^+^+^+^+^+^+^+^+^+^+^+^+^+^+^+^+^+^+^+^+
{{ Reading Back Issues }}
========>>>
If you need to refer to back issues of this newsletter -- and
search the archives -- you can find them at the following
location:
http://PoorRichard.com/newsltr/
-------------------------------------------------------------
(c) Copyright 1999, Top Floor Publishing
All Rights Reserved
-------------------------------------------------------------
If you like this newsletter,
PLEASE FORWARD IT to friends and colleagues!
Please retain this copyright and subscription information;
you may want to remove your e-mail address from below.
It may be posted, in it's entirety or partially, to newsgroups
or mailing lists, as long as the copyright and subscription
information remains.
-------------------------------------------------------------
This newsletter is not sent unsolicited. All the e-mail
addresses in our database have been submitted to us for
inclusion. If you received this message and you haven't
subscribed, a friend or colleague may have forwarded it to
you.
You are currently subscribed to prwebnews as:
[archive@jab.org].
To unsubscribe, forward this message to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
To subscribe, send a blank e-mail message to
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
To change your subscription address, unsubscribe by forwarding
this message to [EMAIL PROTECTED], and then subscribe from
your new email account by sending a blank e-mail message to
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
To read earlier issues of this newsletter, go to
http://www.poorrichard.com/newsltr/
To contact a real live human being (the above addresses go to
mail-handling software), contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
For information about advertising in this newsletter, visit
http://www.poorrichard.com/newsltr/advert.htm or email
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
-------------------------------------------------------------
